Otto Wels

Otto Wels (15 September 1873-16 September 1939) was the chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 14 June 1919 to 16 September 1939, succeeding Friedrich Ebert and preceding Hans Vogel.

Biography
Otto Wels was born on 15 September 1873 in Berlin, German Empire, the son of an innkeeper. Wels worked as a paper hanger before joining the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and he began to work as a labor union official in 1906. In 1916, he was elected to the Reichstag as an SPD MP, and he sat on the workers' council of Berlin after the 1918 November Revolution and the establishment of the Weimar Republic. In 1920, he helped in putting down the Kapp Putsch by organizing a general strike against the coup plotters, and Wels was an active opponent of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party during the 1930s. In the weeks following the Reichstag fire, Hitler banned the socialist SPD, and Wels went into exile in Czechoslovakia and France. Wels died in exile in Paris in 1939.